Help with new graphics card please

DM19

I'm running with a Geforce GTX 670 and wanting an upgrade but not sure what the latest card I can put into my PC that still be compatible with my other older parts. Probably need to upgrade more than just the Gcard but like to start there if it's even worth it with this rig.

What I got...
 MSI Z77A-GD55 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

 EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

 CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular ...

 Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W BX80637I53570K Desktop Processor ...

 OCZ Vertex 4 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) VTX4-25SAT3-256G

 CORSAIR Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model ...

 Seagate BarraCuda STBD3000100 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Kit Retail ...

SAMSUNG DVD Burner SATA Model SH-224BB

Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 140mm and 120mm SSO CPU Cooler

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM

Thank you for any help it is much appreciated. 

GladDog

Your rig is very similar to mine.  I upgraded to an XFX 8GB RX-480 card, and I am very happy.  According to what I have read, there isn't much to be gained by a faster card unless you plan to upgrade your system soon.  So I recommend either an AMD 8GB RX-480 or a Nvidia 6GB GTX1060.  Both are in the $250-300 USD price range, and they both will be a huge upgrade.

If you are thinking of upgrading your system soon, then consider the Nvidia GTX1070 or the upcoming AMD Vega cards.  But if it is going to be over a year to an upgrade, then go with my first recommendation.  Anything faster than an RX-480 or GTX1060 is probably going to be bottlenecked by the 3rd gen i5 CPU (I have an i5 3470).  That means that you get diminishing returns on investment QUICKLY.

As far as brands, I like EVGA for Nvidia and XFX for AMD.  I stay away from BIG overclocks, since they won't give much improvement in performance but will make a lot more heat and noise.

Last thing; Do a BIOS update on your motherboard before you replace the video card.  When I got my RX-480, it would not work.  I WAS PISSED, how could the card I got be bad?  I sent a support request to XFX and they suggested the BIOS update, and it worked!  I had done one in 2013, and considering the age of the board I did not think there would be a newer one, but I was wrong.  Now I am very happy...

Quizzical

You should get a good solid state drive, regardless of what you do about the GPU.

Beyond that, you're in a good situation to upgrade rather than replace.  What GPU to get is largely a question of budget.  You can about double your performance with a Radeon RX 480 for $200, or about triple it with a GeForce GTX 1070 for $400.  If you're not willing to spend at least the $200 or so that it takes for an RX 480, I wouldn't bother with a smaller upgrade.  If you want something faster than a GTX 1070, you'll need a $600+ budget at the moment, but that might come down when AMD launches Vega in a few months.

Loke666

What Quizz said. A  1070 and a good SSD will make your computer running a new one.

Ridelynn

My wife had almost the same build, just a 660 instead of a 670. She wasn't unhappy with it, but I had got her Tomb Raider for something last year, and it could barely play it.

I replaced it with a RX470. I was much happier with it. TR runs like a champ now. The particular 470 I got is much quieter than her older 660. Wins all the way around.

Not saying you should get a 470 in particular, just saying a new GPU and it's still a very good computer.

DM19

Thank you all for your reply's . Thinking of getting a  
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202230&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Video+Cards+-+AMD/ATI-_-N82E16814202230&gclid=CKyC2_qpltICFQkzaQodDJYBQw&gclsrc=aw.ds 

My only question is does it matter if it says x16 at the end of PCI express 3.0 or not? I don't know what the x16 is even for.

Thinking next year i'll start in on a whole new build but for now just want this one to run a little better.

GladDog

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Vrika

DM19 said:

Thank you all for your reply's . Thinking of getting a  
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202230&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Video+Cards+-+AMD/ATI-_-N82E16814202230&gclid=CKyC2_qpltICFQkzaQodDJYBQw&gclsrc=aw.ds 

While RX 470 is not bad graphic card, it's not very large increase compared to your old card:
  http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-670-vs-AMD-RX-470/2181vs3640

I'd recommend trying to either get enough money for at least RX 480, or if you can't staying with your current GPU until you can afford a larger one-time upgrade.

Ozmodan

Have to agree with the prior posters, the  8gb RX-480 card is a much better buy, you will probably get a few years out of it, while the 470 probably does not have the horsepower or enough memory to run upcoming DX12 games without a major drop in resolution.

Quizzical

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

DM19

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

They're all with in my price range so which would you recommend? I'm also wondering about my power unit being enough with the higher end cards... I've come to realize I know a hell of a lot less about this stuff than I thought haha.

filmoret

DM19 said:

Thank you all for your reply's . Thinking of getting a  
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202230&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Video+Cards+-+AMD/ATI-_-N82E16814202230&gclid=CKyC2_qpltICFQkzaQodDJYBQw&gclsrc=aw.ds 

My only question is does it matter if it says x16 at the end of PCI express 3.0 or not? I don't know what the x16 is even for.

Thinking next year i'll start in on a whole new build but for now just want this one to run a little better.

That will work and you will be quite happy with the results.

Quizzical

DM19 said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

They're all with in my price range so which would you recommend? I'm also wondering about my power unit being enough with the higher end cards... I've come to realize I know a hell of a lot less about this stuff than I thought haha.

Your power supply has a lot more wattage than you need for any of those cards.  My ballpark approximation is:

TDP of CPU (77 W) + TDP of GPU (150 W) + 100 W to compensate for everything else.  That makes 327 W.  And you want more than that on the +12 V rail alone, not counting other rails.  A decent quality 400 W power supply would probably be enough, but with less margin than I'd prefer.  A decent 550 W power supply would be plenty.  You've got a pretty good 750 W power supply, which is way overkill.

Nearly all modern video cards are PCI Express 3.0 x16, not x1 or x4 or whatever.  You can tell by looking at the PCI Express connector, which is the beige thing on the bottom of the card.  An x1 connection is very short, like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1N849V2356

If it's a long connector like just about any other modern card, it's x16.

As for which card to get, you could get any of the ones I linked and they'd be fine.  8 GB of memory is more than 4 GB, but that only matters if you want to use more than 4 GB.  If you're a fan of ultra high resolution textures at high monitor resolutions, then maybe you want 8 GB.  Really, though, 4 GB is fine, and there are probably only a handful of games where it would make any difference--and the difference it makes is likely to readily fixed by turning down a texture resolution.

DM19

Quizzical said:

DM19 said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

They're all with in my price range so which would you recommend? I'm also wondering about my power unit being enough with the higher end cards... I've come to realize I know a hell of a lot less about this stuff than I thought haha.

Your power supply has a lot more wattage than you need for any of those cards.  My ballpark approximation is:

TDP of CPU (77 W) + TDP of GPU (150 W) + 100 W to compensate for everything else.  That makes 327 W.  And you want more than that on the +12 V rail alone, not counting other rails.  A decent quality 400 W power supply would probably be enough, but with less margin than I'd prefer.  A decent 550 W power supply would be plenty.  You've got a pretty good 750 W power supply, which is way overkill.

Nearly all modern video cards are PCI Express 3.0 x16, not x1 or x4 or whatever.  You can tell by looking at the PCI Express connector, which is the beige thing on the bottom of the card.  An x1 connection is very short, like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1N849V2356

If it's a long connector like just about any other modern card, it's x16.

As for which card to get, you could get any of the ones I linked and they'd be fine.  8 GB of memory is more than 4 GB, but that only matters if you want to use more than 4 GB.  If you're a fan of ultra high resolution textures at high monitor resolutions, then maybe you want 8 GB.  Really, though, 4 GB is fine, and there are probably only a handful of games where it would make any difference--and the difference it makes is likely to readily fixed by turning down a texture resolution.

I'll go with the https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706 then
Now to wait till my taxes get here haha. Thanks for all the help with this.

GladDog

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

Quizzical

DM19 said:

Quizzical said:

DM19 said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

They're all with in my price range so which would you recommend? I'm also wondering about my power unit being enough with the higher end cards... I've come to realize I know a hell of a lot less about this stuff than I thought haha.

Your power supply has a lot more wattage than you need for any of those cards.  My ballpark approximation is:

TDP of CPU (77 W) + TDP of GPU (150 W) + 100 W to compensate for everything else.  That makes 327 W.  And you want more than that on the +12 V rail alone, not counting other rails.  A decent quality 400 W power supply would probably be enough, but with less margin than I'd prefer.  A decent 550 W power supply would be plenty.  You've got a pretty good 750 W power supply, which is way overkill.

Nearly all modern video cards are PCI Express 3.0 x16, not x1 or x4 or whatever.  You can tell by looking at the PCI Express connector, which is the beige thing on the bottom of the card.  An x1 connection is very short, like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1N849V2356

If it's a long connector like just about any other modern card, it's x16.

As for which card to get, you could get any of the ones I linked and they'd be fine.  8 GB of memory is more than 4 GB, but that only matters if you want to use more than 4 GB.  If you're a fan of ultra high resolution textures at high monitor resolutions, then maybe you want 8 GB.  Really, though, 4 GB is fine, and there are probably only a handful of games where it would make any difference--and the difference it makes is likely to readily fixed by turning down a texture resolution.

I'll go with the https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706 then
Now to wait till my taxes get here haha. Thanks for all the help with this.

If you're not ready to buy yet but have to wait a while before you have the money, then come back and check again once you're ready to buy.  If two cards are identical except that one costs $180 and the other $200, you want the $180 one just because it's cheaper.  Wait two weeks and the prices might swap, in which case, you want the card that is $180 when you make the purchase, not the one that was cheaper today.

Quizzical

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

AMD has many board partners, of which Sapphire is only one.  Sapphire is part of the same company as Zotac, which is an Nvidia board partner.

GladDog

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

AMD has many board partners, of which Sapphire is only one.  Sapphire is part of the same company as Zotac, which is an Nvidia board partner.

Hmm I was told by a geek friend that Sapphire was a direct part of AMD, their retail sales arm; something I never bothered to check.  I thought it was just like Lenovo being the consumer hardware arm of IBM.

filmoret

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

AMD has many board partners, of which Sapphire is only one.  Sapphire is part of the same company as Zotac, which is an Nvidia board partner.

Hmm I was told by a geek friend that Sapphire was a direct part of AMD, their retail sales arm; something I never bothered to check.  I thought it was just like Lenovo being the consumer hardware arm of IBM.

Sounds like a similar problem I had with Acer.  Who gave me a tech phone number because my computer was out of warranty.  Suffice to say they tried to scam me out of 150$ and wouldn't gurantee they would fix my computer.  I was like eh I'll just buy a new one rather then take a chance because I was sure it was the motherboard anyways.

Quizzical

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

AMD has many board partners, of which Sapphire is only one.  Sapphire is part of the same company as Zotac, which is an Nvidia board partner.

Hmm I was told by a geek friend that Sapphire was a direct part of AMD, their retail sales arm; something I never bothered to check.  I thought it was just like Lenovo being the consumer hardware arm of IBM.

No, Sapphire isn't part of AMD.  AMD doesn't sell consumer graphics cards directly to the public, or even to retailers like Best Buy or New Egg.

AMD designs chips, and then works with TSMC and Global Foundries to actually fab the GPU chips.  They also work with Micron, Samsung, and especially Hynix to design the high-performance memory that GPUs need, and get those companies to fab it for them.

AMD often works with Sapphire to design a reference board for new GPUs, as that can start earlier in the development cycle than if board partners have to wait until a GPU chip is completely done and they have a bunch of them before they can start designing the PCB.

AMD then sells either GPU chips in isolation, GPU chips plus memory for them, or completed video cards assembled by Sapphire to their board partners.  AMD board partners include Sapphire, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, XFX, PowerColor, and some others.  Board partners often operate only in some parts of the world.  Reliance on board partners allows AMD to sell their GPUs in Estonia, Peru, Malaysia, and many other places, without needing to understand the local language or culture.  The board partners deal with packaging, warranty service, and some marketing.

If you see video cards from a bunch of different board parnters that look exactly the same (same cooler, same monitor ports, etc.) except for a sticker, those are reference cards.  It's often all reference cards right at launch, and then other board partners come along with their own designs later and the reference cards often disappear.

Nvidia does about the same thing and for about the same reasons, though with some differences in names of companies they work with.  Nvidia has lately taken to calling their reference cards "founders edition".

Ridelynn

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

Quizzical said:

GladDog said:

That card is not bad, but...

It is barely adequate to the next gen of game engines if you want to run at or near max graphics.  This card is about $50 more, but is far more ready for Unreal 4;

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137048

The price is less than $50 more (after rebate) for a huge upgrade in performance.  Since it will likely be more than 3 years before your next upgrade, that will be money well invested.  8 gigs of VRAM is going to be a big deal with the next gen of games.

X16 is in essence 16 data paths.  More is better, & right now X16 is the best.  When you run SLI or Crossfire, the two cards usually have 8 data paths each.  Most motherboards using one PCIe video card are running at X16.

Even if you want an 8 GB RX 480, this one is cheaper:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202275

There's also a 4 GB RX 480 for cheaper yet:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131706
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202270

The 4 GB and 8 GB versions of a Radeon RX 480 will perform the same unless you need more than 4 GB of video memory.  And 4 GB is probably already double what your current card has.

I will never, ever, recommend a Sapphire product.  I had one of their Radeon 6870 cards that was assembled incorrectly.  The thermal paste only covered about 1/2 of the chip cover, and only about 2/3rds of the actual GPU.  It died about 3 months after the warrantee expired, and when I pulled the heat sink off, the unpasted part of the cover actually over the GPU was black.  I asked them if I could get a small credit towards a replacement, since their assembly methods were what caused the card to fail after 2 years and 3 months.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything.  The card was out of warrantee, and I was just asking.  What could it hurt to ask?

Well, it hurt someone.  You would have thought that I had asked for the support guy's first born.  His reply was rude, crude and full of obscenities.  I hung up the phone and swore I would NEVER buy another Sapphire product.  Since Sapphire is the retail arm of AMD graphics, I was considering never buying another AMD product ever again.  After a moment, I realized that was an overreaction - how can you shitcan a whole company over one guy?

So my protest over my treatment is I will never buy another Sapphire product again.  I wrote to them demanding an apology, and never got a response, so no more Sapphire for me.

AMD has many board partners, of which Sapphire is only one.  Sapphire is part of the same company as Zotac, which is an Nvidia board partner.

Hmm I was told by a geek friend that Sapphire was a direct part of AMD, their retail sales arm; something I never bothered to check.  I thought it was just like Lenovo being the consumer hardware arm of IBM.

It used to be, years ago. Sapphire was who made the AMD branded retail cards. AMD stopped making retail cards a long time ago now. Sapphire isn't owned by AMD or anything.

Just like Lenovo isn't owned by IBM - Lenovo bought out IBM's laptop division (pretty much so it could use the Thinkpad name), and is not owned or part of IBM.

kitarad

Sapphire sounds really horrible. 

holdenhamlet

I would get a 480 over the 470.  Doesn't cost too much more and the 480, in my experience, can handle everything out besides BDO (which basically nothing can really "handle").  I got my xfx 8g 480 at best buy for $220.  Just look for deals.

I should note that I haven't played anything that uses more than 4g graphics memory, so the 8g is just nice for future proofing.  4g should be totally fine for anything for years.

1070 is better but it's substantially more expensive.  And it's only really useful if you want to future proof a bit or for some reason need more than like 100 fps in everything at max settings.  1080 is the same idea taken to the extreme.

I'm super happy with the 480.  I figure by the time games need 1070 level cards to run well, there will be a cheaper version of it.

Plus I don't know about you, but the idea of spending $400-600 for a fucking video card is pretty unpalatable to me.

Not sure about sapphire but I will say that the previous bad experience I had with AMD cards stemmed from a Sapphire card I got back in the day.

btw, another thing you can look into if you do decide to go AMD is a freesync monitor later on.

holdenhamlet

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

holdenhamlet said:

... can handle everything out besides BDO (which basically nothing can really "handle")...

Interesting, I have no performance problems in BDO with my 290x.

Well I can get like 30fps with graphics maxed in high end mode.  Every other game I play is 100+ maxxed.

And no graphics card eliminates the pop-in.

Hyperpsycrow

We have same cpu cooler ftw :awesome:

Get a 1070 cuz the 1080 is alot more expensive..or buy a used 980 or used 2 x 970 that is better then 1070

Quizzical

DarkestOverlord said:

We have same cpu cooler ftw :awesome:

Get a 1070 cuz the 1080 is alot more expensive..or buy a used 980 or used 2 x 970 that is better then 1070

No, no, no, no, no.  Stay far away from buying older cards for SLI.  SLI is extremely dependent on per-game driver optimizations to work properly, and only the latest architectures get those optimizations.  Most of the era of SLI working right on two GTX 970s for the most popular games has already passed.  Maxwell may (or may not) still benefit from optimizations done for Pascal because the architectures are so similar, but even if so, that probably ends with Volta.